Meziantou.Framework

Introduction

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Command-line tools write ANSI escape sequences to color and style their output: ESC[31m turns the text red, ESC[1m makes it bold, ESC[0m resets the style. A terminal interprets them, but a log file, a test assertion or a web page shows them as garbage. Meziantou.Framework.AnsiFormatting removes these sequences, or reads the styles they describe.

What you can do with it

  • Remove the escape sequences from the output of a process before you log it, compare it, or parse it. See Getting started.
  • Read the text and its styles: bold, italic, underline, inverse, and the foreground and background colors of each part of the text, for instance to display colored output in a web page. See Reading styles.

Supported sequences

AnsiTextProcessor recognizes two families of escape sequences:

  • CSI sequences start with ESC [ and end with a character between @ and ~ (0x40-0x7E). They include the SGR sequences that set the style, such as ESC[1;31m, and the sequences that move the cursor or erase the line.
  • OSC sequences start with ESC ] and end with BEL or ESC \. They include hyperlinks (OSC 8) and window titles (OSC 0 and OSC 2).

Only SGR sequences, the CSI sequences that end with m, describe styles. The other sequences are removed and carry no style.

Namespaces

AnsiTextProcessor is in the Meziantou.Framework namespace. The types of the parsed text (AnsiText, AnsiTextRun, AnsiStyle, AnsiColor and AnsiColorKind) are nested in AnsiTextProcessor.